It is a very common practice to annotate or take notes on various forms or written material. For example, a user reading a physical document may add comments relevant to the written material. In some cases, the user may add comments that are especially relevant to a certain portion of the written material, and may indicate a connection between the comments and the associated portion of the written material. For example, the user may add comments in a nearby available free space and/or connect the comments with the associated text. The user may also highlight or underline important content, or use other various marking strategies. In other words, a user may annotate a document by writing comments or notes in a nearby available free space, highlighting, or underlining content, or the like. In one example, the user may add a comment that is relevant to a sentence or phrase that the user considers will be better understood by virtue of the additional information. In another example, the user may highlight content that is considered important or that facilitates a better understanding of the written material.
However, the annotations discussed above are linked to the physical document and do not allow the user to share the annotations with others. The related art includes certain techniques for sharing annotations made on electronic documents, but fails to enable sharing of annotations made on physical documents. Therefore, there is a need for methods and systems enabling a user to share annotations on physical documents with other users.